Nell was quieting down, and Mary nodded again, to encourage her.
"Well you know how it is trying to get a job without any references. No decent place will take you. I kept it up for weeks. Why, I couldn't even get a trial. When I couldn't get references, or even refer them to the last place, they'd look at me as if I were trying to steal a job."
"I know," murmured Mary. "They'd look at me, too."
"So I got desperate. You know what that is, too. I had to have a job or starve. And I had to have references—so I wrote them!"
"Oh, Nell!"
Nell looked up defiantly.
"Well, what else could I do? And I didn't harm anybody, did I? I didn't say anything about myself that wasn't true. All I did was to use some good names. And not one of them would ever have known if you hadn't called that woman up on the telephone. They were all customers of the place where I worked. I knew their names and addresses. I couldn't go and ask them to give me references, could I? I couldn't even do that with the one I'd spoken to. So I got some stationery and wrote myself references—that's all."
Mary pondered the confession.
"If it had only been one reference," she began, "but you had five or six."
"I only intended to write one," declared Nell. "But what was the use of being a piker, I thought. So—well I plunged."